


Righteous Side of Hell

by Fudgyokra



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce struggles with sexuality and mental health, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Romance, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 12:05:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12080715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: “I think you’re lying to yourself. I think aaaall of this,” he said, gesturing to the world around them, “is a front for something you’ve been hiding for a very. Long. Time.”





	Righteous Side of Hell

Sometimes he put too much thought into how different they were. Whereas Bruce was large and tan, all rippling muscle and chiseled features, Joker was…less. He was all right, sure: Lean, tough, and proud, but still skinny and pale in comparison. Half the size of the other man, in fact, and absolutely encapsulated by the power that knocked the breath out of him, like Bruce owned the word strength.

It almost hurt, how badly Joker wanted him. His eyes practically glowed when he saw the same desire burning in Bruce’s pupils: contained, ashamed. He _knew_ that look. It was the look of complacency with the public opinion, buried underneath ideas about what mental health and sexuality meant.

Still, it _was_ just the two of them there tonight, standing a foot apart with Bruce’s earnest eyes on his in a way that stirred a tsunami in his gut. He knew he shouldn’t. Maybe if Bruce made the first move…

“What are you looking at?” the man in question growled.

“Nothing,” Joker said, and it was halfway true. “Just an empty shell of a man.”

All Bruce could feel for a minute was numbed rage rattling his bones, making him clench his teeth.

He could do it, he thought. He could grasp onto something he’d wanted for years. Something he’d wanted of other men passing by. Something he couldn’t admit until it was too late, and the Joker was his only option willing to compromise. He frowned at his own thought just in time to see the clown’s expression become deathly serious.

“The eyes don’t lie,” he said knowingly.

Bruce felt a wave of guilt in his stomach. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, you lunatic.”

“Ouch,” Joker said, mouth curling upwards, antithetically happy in response to Bruce’s obvious dysphoria.

It was hard to admit, but he saw the way Joker came at him with desperation. Before Bruce could collect himself, there was a hot mouth on his and arms wrapped around his waist in an intimate touch he craved and yet feared. It felt horribly natural for Joker’s arms to be locked around him in an embrace. His usual wide grin proved to be so horrible and daunting until it was firmly against his own mouth, making his thoughts reel backward and hit the deepest, most hidden parts of himself.

This was _too_ right. It was what he wanted when he considered Selina and all the other women he’d ever been with. It wasn’t what he pretended to want for Alfred’s sake, but what he _really_ wanted: A masculine presence fitted into his arms, with skin warm and as scarred as his own.

The bites from their previous battles suddenly seemed less innocuous. Every bruise and slash indicated repressed sexual forwardness; every nail mark in Bruce’s flesh seemed fresh and desired. Before the thoughts could wander, he looked away, already aware that it was too late to change the story.

Joker knew. He did not grin, but instead frowned again, contemplating life like a normal, mortal man would. And then he stepped away. Bruce felt cold and abandoned, all of the sudden.

“I see your game,” the latter growled, trying to regain the upper hand.

Joker didn’t move. “There’s no game between us,” he said. “I think you’re lying to yourself. I think _aaaall_ of this,” he said, gesturing to the world around them, “is a front for something you’ve been hiding for a very. Long. Time.”

That was all it took before Bruce was bearing his teeth down on Joker’s bottom lip, letting his tongue capture the flesh beneath him in the one way he understood—a way in which he could dominate and take charge, like a man was supposed to. Right?

His bite drew blood, and he tasted the copper between his lips like hot, molten pleasure. Every sin he’d ever prayed against for his father’s sake jumped to the forefront of his mind. Despite them, he was reeling with the way Joker didn’t flinch at the pain but _keened_ , eyes dusky and dark, looking at him from a million miles away. In fact, he was looking at him with an honest expression that Bruce did not recognize.

Joker seemed to mean the next words he spoke. “ _Do it_ , Batman.” It wasn’t a request, but a confession.

Bruce, ignoring the sting of shame in his chest, laid Joker on the ground and maneuvered a hand up his shirt. He thought of what he’d been taught, of what he’d been raised with. He didn’t mean for it to end up this way, with him gripping desperately onto his worst enemy’s chest and grounding his lips into the other man’s. Joker’s eyes positively blazed under him, his spindly fingers curling around the bulge in his pants without hesitation.

“A bit late on the wooing, aren’t we?” he teased, making Bruce frown.

He wasn’t kissing so much as devouring now, probing his mouth like an animal starved of sustenance. He loved every moment of it: The taste of mint, of smoke, of the despair and psychosis he’d sought to fix since the moment Joker had set eyes upon him.

It was three a.m., as per his watch, but that didn’t matter now, as he rutted his hips hard into Joker’s, layers of clothes still separating them, driving him mad with desire and frustration alike. Joker looked on in uncensored want, curling his fingers in Bruce’s hair and looking at him like he’d personally laid out the stars.

He made himself look away. Sex wasn’t about the feelings in his chest, rather about the way he needed escape. Joker had to know that. At any rate, he needed him now—needed to see that fragile skin scrape against the concrete roof.

Bruce was three fingers deep inside him before he knew it, pushing back and forth until Joker was composed in a swan-like arch. Bruce admired his skin, marked with delicately raised scars and many more marks that he reminded himself to ask about later. Gorgeous, like a siren on a screen but right in _front_ of him, lips red and o-shaped, eyes half-lidded.

He’d never felt the desire to _take take take_ quite like this before, but Joker was deliberate with his good looks. That green hair blazing in its fluffy cloud around his head, eyes emerald and shining in the way Bruce had dreamt of at night. He thought that maybe he could pretend for a little longer that those eyes were Selina’s or Barbara’s, but no—society wanted that. Joker was hot to the touch, and he wanted this just as much as he did, if not more.

His hips were so starkly white against the gray ground, and they were tilted upward at the perfect angle for Bruce’s thumbs to sink into the dimples of his skin, pressing possessively into the divots. It was carnally desperate when he took the other, tinged with only the barest hints of decency. The roof held them both, buried in hazy pleasure with the sounds of the nightlife blaring in the background of their actions.

“All the hate you faced,” Joker breathed, his head bobbing up and down with the motion, “I can change in an instant.”

Bruce looked away. “Shut up,” he demanded, ignoring the way Joker laughed as he dug his nails into Bruce’s thighs.

“Come on, take me hard, like you’ve always dreamed of with men like Gordon. Men like Jason…”

Bruce scowled, showing his teeth. “Shut up!” he repeated, raking his nails down Joker’s chest. It was supposed to deter but instead made the other man groan, guttural and wanting, from somewhere deep inside him. His Adam’s apple bobbed with the pressure of the sound, pale throat exposed and stretched out before him in a way Bruce wanted to look at forever.

“We can do it like this as often as you want,” Joker said with a low chuckle. “I won’t tell Harley.”

Somehow, this set Bruce’s skin aflame, hotter than it had been before. “Don’t say that,” he said, jaw tight. “She doesn’t—you don’t love her.”

“Are you trying to admit something to me?” Joker asked.

Bruce tried to think of something, _anything_ , that would take the taste of Joker’s skin out of his mind, but came up short. He said nothing.

Joker, to his surprise, did not laugh. Instead, he knitted his brows together, leaning his head back as he came, painting Bruce’s chest with streaks of cum in a way that had him heated and needy, bucking forward like a rabbit in heat until he, too, came with raw force, blinded by white.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

The worst part was the aftermath, when he had to face what he’d done without the heat of the moment forcing things to make any damn sense. For a while, he was stone-still, his arms rigid on either side of Joker’s head.

The clown did not make it easy. He smiled up at him, perfectly contented to just lie there and bask. “What do you want me say?” he taunted, lifting a brow. “’Sorry for letting you tear yourself down’?”

Bruce scowled, but was still unwilling to stand. “I wouldn’t call it that,” he lied.

“Oh, yes, you would,” Joker said, somehow all-too-knowing and looking at him in a strange way now that all the humor had bled from his features. “ _I_ don’t see it quite so grimly, but...well, you know.”

“Is that a joke?” Bruce mumbled, aiming a hard stare at him to let him know he meant business.

“I don’t know, was it?” Joker asked as he tapped his chin. “If it was, it wasn’t very funny.”

“No.” Bruce pushed himself up onto his knees. “It wasn’t.”

“None of this is very funny,” Joker said, looking perfectly docile and less fiendish when he was splayed out on his back, hands curling into his own hair just to find purchase in this maddening episode of his life.

Bruce understood something about him just then that he hadn’t meant to find out: Perhaps Joker’s obsession with him meant something other than hatred.

With a pensive frown, he looked out at the city lights, through the smog. “You’re right,” he said, hoping that spelled out his own opinion on the matter.

Joker wasn’t keen on letting him get away with only that, though. “I am?” he feigned confusion. “I don’t even know what I’m talking about!” His laugh was high, tight, and unmistakably fake.

Bruce grumbled at nothing, still staring off into the distance as if that could make him vanish from the scene he’d created for himself. When Joker pressed hesitant fingertips to his inner thigh, though, he had to look down. He didn’t know what his face looked like for the split second he let his emotions through the mask, but it must have startled the other, because he immediately retracted his hand.

“Hey,” Joker started, almost defensively when he realized what had happened, “I think we’re a little past shyness, now, aren’t we!”

Truly, from the bottom of his heart, Bruce didn’t know what possessed him to smile. Seeing the other man’s startled expression did wonders for the soul, though. “You know,” he began, content, if only for this little slice of temporality, “I suppose you’re right about that, too.”

Joker regarded him thoughtfully, then said, “Take me home.”

“Then get in the car,” Bruce returned evenly, watching the other’s pupils grow with interest. “I don’t suppose you’re looking for company tonight?”

“You sure know how to sweet-talk a guy,” Joker said with a prim smile. “Lots of practice, eh?”

Bruce thought of all those dinner dates he’d been bogged down with in years past. “Something like that.”

“Something a little less honest than this?” Joker asked, and Bruce understood it to be an admission.

“A lot less honest than this,” he agreed.

“Then just call me ‘Pastor,’ baby, because I’m ready to give you the most honest night you’ve ever had in your life.”

“I’m quite confident,” Bruce said with a smile, “that you already did.”


End file.
